Speedo

Speedo Review

By Christopher Null

Ed Jager is "Speedo," a loser of a demolition derby driver who's impossible not to love.

Speedo is a Long Island hick, a gas station mechanic who loves his kids only slightly more than he loves winning the big $1,000 prize at the weekend demo derby. He's a truly devoted father: Ed hasn't slept in the same room as his wife for 10 years, but he won't get a divorce because he doesn't want his parents to come from a broken home. Meanwhile, Ed spends every free moment working on his junker cars down at the garage, reinforcing them and bending them back into shape in the hopes that he'll be the last car standing come the next derby.

Speedo is a film about the demo races, tracking Jager for about a year, but it's also a story about a sad sack with everyday problems -- stuff that you or I can relate to (if not directly, at least obliquely). He's got financial woes, relationship woes, his son dyes his hair pink and fronts a heavy metal band, wearing duct tape in lieu of a shirt. And toward the end of Jesse Moss's 80-minute investigation of Moss's life, Speedo has begun to change. He finally moves out (in fact, he sells the mouse without telling his wife), he meets a new gal, and he eventually gets out of demo and into stock car racing. Will Speedo end up better off than before? His life is such a wreck (ho ho!), it can't help but get better.

Speedo is full of life and hope. It's the perverse opposite of a film like Spellbound, but it's strangely uplifting nonetheless.